Saturday, 15 February 2014

The British Guiana One-Cent Magenta, the world’s most
famous stamp. Estimate $10/20 million. Image courtesy of Sotheby's.

NEW YORK – Sotheby’s New York will offer
the most famous stamp in the world in a dedicated auction on June 17. No
stamp is rarer than the sole-surviving example of the British Guiana One-Cent
Magenta, a unique yet unassuming penny issue from 1856, and no stamp is more
valuable. Each of the three times it has been sold at auction, it has
established a new record price for a single stamp.

The British Guiana is equally notable for its legacy, having been
rediscovered by a 12-year-old Scottish boy living in South
America in 1873, and from there passing through some of the most
important stamp collections ever assembled. The stamp comes to auction this
spring with an estimate of $10 million to $20 million, which would mark a new
world auction record for a stamp.
The current auction record for a single stamp is 2,8750,000 Swiss francs
(approximately US $2.2 million), set by the Treskilling Yellow in 1996.
The British Guiana has not been on view publicly since the 1986, when it
was exhibited at Ameripex ’86 International Stamp Show in Chicago. The stamp will travel this spring
to locations including London and Hong Kong,
before returning to New York
for exhibition in Sotheby’s York
Avenue galleries beginning June 14.
The British Guiana is on offer from the
estate of John du Pont – its most recent purchaser, in 1980 – and a portion
of proceeds from the sale will benefit the Eurasian Pacific Wildlife
Conservation Foundation, which du Pont championed during his lifetime.
David Redden, director of Special Projects and worldwide chairman of
Sotheby’s Books Department, commented: “I have been with Sotheby’s all my
working life, but before I knew about the world’s greatest works of art,
before I knew about the Mona Lisa or Chartres Cathedral I knew about the British Guiana. For me, as a schoolboy stamp collector,
it was a magical object, the very definition of rarity and value,
unobtainable rarity and extraordinary value. That schoolboy of long ago would
be bemused and astonished to think that he would one day, years later, be
temporary guardian of such a world treasure.”The British Guiana One-Cent
Magenta
In 1852, British Guiana began receiving regular postage stamps
manufactured in England
by Waterlow & Sons. But in 1856, a shipment of stamps was delayed, which
threatened a disruption of postal service throughout British
Guiana. The postmaster turned to the printers of the local Royal
Gazette newspaper, and commissioned a contingency supply of postage stamps:
the one-cent magenta, a four-cent magenta and a four-cent blue.
The sole-surviving example of the one-cent magenta was first rediscovered
not far from where it was initially purchased. In 1873, L. Vernon Vaughan, a
12-year-old Scottish schoolboy living with his family in British Guiana,
found the stamp among a group of family papers bearing many British
Guiana issues. A budding philatelist (stamp collector), Vaughan could not have
known the one-cent was unique, but he did know that he did not have an
example, and added it to his album. He would later sell the stamp to another
local collector in British Guiana, for
several shillings.
The British Guiana One-Cent entered the UK in 1878, and shortly after, it
was purchased by Count Philippe la Renotière von Ferrary, perhaps the
greatest stamp collector in history. France
seized his collection, which had been donated to the Postmuseum in Berlin, as part of the war reparations due from Germany, and
sold the stamp in 1922 as one of a series of celebrated auctions from
1920–25. It was bought by Arthur Hind, a textile magnate from New York, for
its first auction-record price of $35,000, followed by: Australian engineer
Frederick T. Small; then a consortium headed by Irwin Weinberg; and lastly by
John du Pont, heir to the eponymous chemical company fortune, eccentric
amateur sportsman, and avid collector. Du Pont paid $935,000 for the stamp in
a 1980 auction, marking the object’s most recent record-setting price.

WELCOME.

WELCOME to the AUCTIONEER. Auctioneering is one of the passions of my life. I hope to post bits and pieces of interesting news on auctions and auctioneering which I come across while trawling the web, as well as my own experiences.

Please contact me if you would like a lecture or an after-dinner speech. My favourite lecture is:‘A history of auctions from Ancient Babylon to Internet Auctions’.

I am also a freelance auctioneer and ALWAYS interested in work. I have conducted over 2,000 auctions. While my speciality is in Collector's Items and Antiques, I have conducted auctions of property, cars, cattle, lettings, gold, tack, computers as well as charity auctions. Have appeared on several TV programs.